General Prologue: Introduction

General Prologue: Introduction

Summary

The narrator opens the General Prologue with a description
of the return of spring. He describes the April rains, the burgeoning
flowers and leaves, and the chirping birds. Around this time of
year, the narrator says, people begin to feel the desire to go on
a pilgrimage. Many devout English pilgrims set off to visit shrines
in distant holy lands, but even more choose to travel to Canterbury
to visit the relics of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral,
where they thank the martyr for having helped them when they were
in need. The narrator tells us that as he prepared to go on such
a pilgrimage, staying at a tavern in Southwark called the Tabard
Inn, a great company of twenty-nine travelers entered. The travelers
were a diverse group who, like the narrator, were on their way to
Canterbury. They happily agreed to let him join them. That night,
the group slept at the Tabard, and woke up early the next morning
to set off on their journey. Before continuing the tale, the narrator
declares his intent to list and describe each of the members of
the group.

Analysis

The invocation of spring with which the General Prologue
begins is lengthy and formal compared to the language of the rest
of the Prologue. The first lines situate the story in a particular
time and place, but the speaker does this in cosmic and cyclical
terms, celebrating the vitality and richness of spring. This approach
gives the opening lines a dreamy, timeless, unfocused quality, and
it is therefore surprising when the narrator reveals that he’s going
to describe a pilgrimage that he himself took rather than telling
a love story. A pilgrimage is a religious journey undertaken for
penance and grace. As pilgrimages went, Canterbury was not a very
difficult destination for an English person to reach. It was, therefore,
very popular in fourteenth-century England, as the narrator mentions.
Pilgrims traveled to visit the remains of Saint Thomas Becket, archbishop
of Canterbury, who was murdered in 1170 by
knights of King Henry II. Soon after his death, he became the most
popular saint in England. The pilgrimage in The Canterbury
Tales should not be thought of as an entirely solemn occasion,
because it also offered the pilgrims an opportunity to abandon work
and take a vacation.

In line 20, the narrator abandons
his unfocused, all-knowing point of view, identifying himself as
an actual person for the first time by inserting the first person—“I”—as
he relates how he met the group of pilgrims while staying at the
Tabard Inn. He emphasizes that this group, which he encountered
by accident, was itself formed quite by chance (25–26).
He then shifts into the first-person plural, referring to the pilgrims
as “we” beginning in line 29, asserting his status
as a member of the group.

The narrator ends the introductory portion of his prologue
by noting that he has “tyme and space” to tell his narrative. His
comments underscore the fact that he is writing some time after
the events of his story, and that he is describing the characters
from memory. He has spoken and met with these people, but he has waited
a certain length of time before sitting down and describing them.
His intention to describe each pilgrim as he or she seemed to
him is also important, for it emphasizes that his descriptions are
not only subject to his memory but are also shaped by his individual
perceptions and opinions regarding each of the characters. He positions himself
as a mediator between two groups: the group of pilgrims, of which
he was a member, and us, the audience, whom the narrator explicitly
addresses as “you” in lines 34 and 38.

On the other hand, the narrator’s declaration that he
will tell us about the “condicioun,” “degree,” and “array” (dress)
of each of the pilgrims suggests that his portraits will be based
on objective facts as well as his own opinions. He spends considerable
time characterizing the group members according to their social
positions. The pilgrims represent a diverse cross section of fourteenth-century English
society. Medieval social theory divided society into three broad
classes, called “estates”: the military, the clergy, and the laity. (The
nobility, not represented in the General Prologue, traditionally derives
its title and privileges from military duties and service, so it is
considered part of the military estate.) In the portraits that we
will see in the rest of the General Prologue, the Knight and Squire
represent the military estate. The clergy is represented by the
Prioress (and her nun and three priests), the Monk, the Friar, and
the Parson. The other characters, from the wealthy Franklin to the
poor Plowman, are the members of the laity. These lay characters
can be further subdivided into landowners (the Franklin), professionals
(the Clerk, the Man of Law, the Guildsmen, the Physician, and the
Shipman), laborers (the Cook and the Plowman), stewards (the Miller,
the Manciple, and the Reeve), and church officers (the Summoner
and the Pardoner). As we will see, Chaucer’s descriptions of the various characters
and their social roles reveal the influence of the medieval genre
of estates satire.